Pine trees + cranes = pine trees and cranes prolong life
Cat + butterfly = old age (homophone for cat and butterfly)
Oh...and... .....
A combination of crane, pine and turtle. There is the "Pine and Crane Picture", which is a pattern composed of pine and crane. Pine is a tree of longevity. The ancients worshiped pine and mystified its longevity, making pine a symbol of longevity and immortality in people's lives. The birthday picture uses pine, which means longevity. In traditional Chinese beliefs, the crane is a mascot full of immortality, symbolizing immortality and longevity. The crane's
shape is otherworldly and elegant, so it is related to immortals. Among the cranes, the red-crowned crane is called the immortal crane. The ancients believed that cranes were immortal birds with longevity. "Huainan Eight Gong Xianghe Sutra" says: "The crane is a crane, because the metal energy relies on the essence of fire to support itself. The number of gold is nine and the number of fire is seven. Therefore, there will be a small change in seven years, a major change in sixteen years, and the change will stop in one hundred and sixty years. , its shape has been stable for thousands of years, so its color is white, its voice is heard in the sky, so its head is red, it eats water, so its beak is long, and it hangs in front, so its hind toes are short, it lives on land, so its feet are high and its tail is high. Tiao, soaring in the clouds, so the hair is plump and fleshy. The big throat is used to spit out the old, and the neck is repaired to absorb the new, so it is born, and the life is immeasurable..." This fantasy about the mystery of the crane's longevity has placed people's hope on becoming immortals. and the wish for longevity. There is a story in the third volume of "Yiyuan" written by Liu Jingshu of the Southern Song Dynasty. It is said that two white cranes in the Jin Dynasty knew what happened in the legendary era of Emperor Yao, which shows his long life. "In the winter of the second year of Taikang's reign in the Jin Dynasty, there was a severe cold. People in Nanzhou saw two white cranes under the bridge and said: 'This is the coldest day since the year of Yao's death.' So they flew away." This legend led to the idiom: "Crane "The year of Yao" is used as a metaphor for the long period of time and the amount of knowledge gained. In Taoism, the crane is a symbol of immortals, and those with immortal demeanor and Taoist bones often have the characteristics of "crane hair and childlike appearance". There is a record in Shishuo Xinyu: Wang Gong put on a cloak made of crane feathers, and Meng Chang commented that he was "a true god among immortals." It can be seen from this record that the immortals and cranes in the minds of the ancients have the same characteristics in form and spirit. Cranes can even be the incarnation of immortals. Classics also record rumors of someone turning into a crane and becoming an immortal. The first volume of "Sou Shen Ji" says: "Ding Lingwei, a native of Liaodong, learned Taoism in Lingxu Mountain, and later turned into a crane and returned to Liao." This rumor is also recorded in "Xu Shen Ji", which records that Ding Lingwei persuaded people after he turned into a crane. Learning Taoism and Becoming an Immortal: "There are flower-shaped pillars at the gate of Liaodong City. Suddenly a crane gathers and hovers in the air. It says: 'There are birds, there are birds, they are powerful. They have been home for a thousand years and now they are coming back. The city is still the same and the people are different. Why not imitate the immortals and go away, accompanying the empty tombs and forts." 'Then it soared to the sky." Of course, more often than not, cranes are the tools used by immortals to become immortals. Those who become immortals often ride on cranes to ascend to heaven. At the same time, cranes are also the mounts used by immortals to travel around. Volume 6 of Yin Yun's "Novel" from the Liang Dynasty in the Southern Dynasties said: "We have guests who follow each other, and each expresses his or her ambition. Some wish to be the governor of Yangzhou, some wish to provide more materials, or some wish to ride on a crane to rise. One of them said: "With a hundred thousand guan around your waist, you can ride on a crane." Crane ascends to Yangzhou. "The crane is the object on which the ancients placed their dreams of becoming an immortal. It is a mascot that symbolizes longevity, so it is often combined with the longevity pine to form a longevity picture. Cranes are often combined with turtles to form longevity pictures, because turtles are also long-lived animals, as mentioned above.
There are also birthday pictures composed with the character "shou", which can be called "shou character pattern". There are multi-character compositions, such as "hundred years of longevity"; there are also single-character compositions, the long ones are called "longevity", and the round ones are called "yuanshou" or "reunion longevity".
The multi-character composition of the "Hundred Shou" picture is a pattern that imitates a hundred characters for "Shou" in various ancient and modern styles. It can be divided into two types. One type is that the wide stroke frame of a big longevity character is filled with a hundred different fonts of the character "shou". Another type is to arrange a hundred different characters of "Shou" in ten rows, with ten in each row, forming a square shape; or to arrange a hundred "Shou" characters in a circle to form a circular pattern. The Hundred Years of Life Picture had already appeared in the Song Dynasty at the latest. The Qing Dynasty Qian Zeng's "Study Min Qiu Ji·Zi Xue Bai Shou Tu" said that during the Shaoding period of the Southern Song Dynasty, Jingjiang ordered the historian to inscribe the Chinese characters "Hundred Life" on Confucius Rock. The 100-year-old painting was very popular in the Ming Dynasty. During the Zhengde period of the Ming Dynasty, Zhaobi of Kunming compiled a book called "Hundred Life Characters", which was divided into 24 categories. Zhu Guozhen's "Yongzhuang Xiaopin" of the Ming Dynasty records a picture of a hundred years of longevity in a family collection: "Yu Shi Zhang (Xue Xun) has a family collection of a painting of longevity, which was left by his ancestor. The characters are four feet high and seven inches in regular script. The black text and the dot paintings all have the character "Shou", and the white text is the "Shou" character. There are no similar ones. "Cao Xueqin also mentioned the "Hundred Life" picture in "A Dream of Red Mansions", which was placed on the screen.
Chapter 71 of the book says: "Jia Mu asked: 'How many of these families here have screens around me?' Sister Feng said, 'There are sixteen families in my country, twelve of them. The one with the big frame...the one with the hundred-year-old longevity picture in gold is the best.'" The hundred-year-old picture is a popular birthday gift that has been passed down and is still used to celebrate birthdays. In recent years, Shanxi seal carver Xu Ruoshi created another seal carving work "Qianshou Seal", which is 30 meters long and consists of a seal with 1050 square meters of longevity. The seals include oracle bone inscriptions, small seal scripts, Han seals, Wei steles, ancient coin inscriptions, Wadang inscriptions, regular script, cursive script, running script, and Li scripts, as well as Mongolian, Manchu, Korean and other ethnic minority scripts. It can be said to be a collection of all ethnic groups in China. The culmination of ancient and modern fonts for the character "Shou".
The single "longevity" pattern and the "longevity" pattern are both patterned characters, which are more like patterns than words. In addition, the single "Shou" character pattern has additional patterns, such as "Ruyi Shou character group", which is surrounded by Ruyi patterns around the circular longevity pattern; and "Five blessings holding longevity", painted Five bats form a circle, with a circular longevity pattern in the circle and so on. These patterns with the Chinese character "Shou" are mostly used in birthday celebrations and are affixed on doors, walls and various utensils. They are even printed on the elderly's clothes, quilts, pillows, etc. to pray for blessings and longevity.